All terrible villains... but generally they aren't the villains in the shows.

Usually the villain is some other people/characters in the show with immoral and/or possibly sociopathic tendencies.

My favorite parts of these types of shows are not the backdrops but instead the efforts to survive by the people and the human-character interaction amongst them.

Why did it happen?How did it happen?How will they hold onto their humanity? How will civilization endure?How & Why do some people choose different ways of dealing with the catastrophe? What about life, love, and all of the little things that they had before this happened? What's really important in life?etc...

Okay, then maybe The Walking Dead is just lousy on drama? Usually, I like drama - but this show's characters and their problems just aren't interesting...

Or maybe I'm just an old-fashioned horror fan who watches horror shows to get some chills, too... I really do think that, if a show features horror monsters, it should try to actually be scary. TWD is not scary...

I think you've hit the nail on the head. You want a fright fest and it doesn't deliver. It really was never developed to be a scary horror fright fest. The core component of this show is drama. The old Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead do a much better job (in my opinion) of being frightening.

And honestly, the drama is quite terrible in TWD, it has it's moments but most of it is terrible in my opinion.

Something just popped into my head... Has their ever actually been a scary and/or frightening TV series?

I thought about the Twilight zone but it wasn't really scary to me. It had an element of creep and thrill to it so I guess it qualifies.

Has there ever been anything like a Friday the 13th Horror show (not that weird adventure show they had on for awhile) or a Zombie gore fest?

Do shows like Falling Skies count? They have a bit of gore, some frightening images and the threat of an alien invasion? Does that count as one? Honestly, I found it much more frightening then The Walking Dead.

Something just popped into my head... Has their ever actually been a scary and/or frightening TV series?

Are You Afraid of the Dark. That series scared the crap out of me as a kid.

Anyway, back to the Walking Dead. Season 1 started out good, started to drift off. Season 2, it was lacking in several areas, but it was starting to pick up on one of the elements that people seem to be complaining about. Yes, zombies are lousy villains, especially after such a long time. But the main 'villain' for this season wasn't the zombies, it was, IMO, Shane. True, it did drag on a bit longer than it should, but it was a step in the right direction. And now, I think things have started to pick back up in season 3. Between characters getting killed, new ones being added, and some current ones developing and changing, it is starting to change the dynamic. And there is a very clear villain in the Governor.

I really like The Walking Dead, even though season 2 was a bit of a snore fest. 3 has been much better. But then again, I often work as a makeup artist, so I'm heavily invested in that tech, and can watch it for that alone.

Yes, absolutely Twin Peaks. I was watching that at the time, and yes it had it's lame moments, but when it was scary, it was really scary. Bob's scenes, especially toward the end when he was appearing to Maddie, were incredibly creepy for prime time TV. Made me a Lynch fan for life. If you were a Peaks fan, you know... if you didn't see it... you'll probably never understand. But that series to me was one of the best ever to come through network TV.

Granted I stopped watching after the first season ( though I have been enjoying the game.) but there's no Frank Booth or Bane in the walking dead. There's no Vlad The Impaler or Genghis Khan. There's just these seemingly one- dimensional strawman villains without bite.

...wait, did...you're talking about Bane from Batman, right? Did you just imply Bane is not one of the most one-dimensional characters ever created?

I didn't read every post in this thread, but I thought I'd put my two cents in.

I absolutely love this show. I've watched it religiously from day one. Granted, series two is seriously lacking in excitement until the last few episodes. But series three seriously makes up for it, in my opinion.

The Walking Dead isn't just about zombies, and people surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. It's about the characters; how they come to rely on each other for survival; how their relationships grow, and break down; how they react in various situations. It's one of the reasons I enjoy watching it so much. The characters are all so unique and different from each other, and they all work well together. Some of them annoyed me *cough* Carl *cough* at first, but they've redeemed themselves later on in the series'. Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, is an amazing actor (and British ). He plays his part so well. In fact, each and every one of them does.

The show might not be for everyone, or it might not have enough zombies in it to please everyone, but give it a chance. At least watch series three; it might be slow at times but it's all made up for in the end. Just look at the characters' and their developments. That's what makes The Walking Dead so bloody brilliant. If it was all purely zombies and not much focus on the characters', it wouldn't make for a very interesting show.

Trust me when I say the show really doesn't do the series justice, if you want to get into The Walking Dead you should look into the comics. I started with the first season of TWD and I was kinda turned off by it when everyone I talked to said Shane was a horrible person... he's just trying to get by and do what he feels is right!

Also, the series really isn't all that great... what is great is all of the discussions it starts. I remember sitting around for three hours discussing why

I tried watching it because I had so many rapid fans saying"watch it! become one of us..."but...for me I have just never been big on zombies..shows,movies...ect.

I will admit a guilty pleasure of mine are law shows..law and order of any kind and I recently started watching one called Harry's law with Kathy Bates.(IE crazy bitch from the movie misery) She is awesome. But for a horror junkie who has been watching horror movies since I was 4 years old..I have to say not many shows really scare me and sorry but the walking dead just did not keep my interest.

And although the show itself over all did not scare me...the bad guys called the gentlemen from Buffy...jesus fuck those things were creepy.They didn't talk and they creeped me out.

Wait, season 3 is actually good? I saw a picture of it on FB, and it did look interesting... just the writing is a bit of an effort to get through.

See, when you have a monster movie, most of the time the monster is quite capable of just goring the characters even if they acted logically. So having them make stupid decisions and dying for them makes no sense. But with zombies, I'm more sympathetic for the writers, since they now have the job of killing these people off without making them so horribly stupid that the viewer doesn't want to see them win.

But with zombies, I'm more sympathetic for the writers, since they now have the job of killing these people off without making them so horribly stupid that the viewer doesn't want to see them win.

Ah, but that's what other people are for.

I think people have killed more people than zombies have this season. Though I'm including zombie deaths caused by people's actions (ie: breaking a camp's defenses to let zombies in on purpose) as people kills rather than zombie kills.

The issue with me, is that the writers HAVE to automatically assume that people in general are too stupid to live if Zombies can actually be a threat. Zombies are in general a stupid premise. Let's ignore all the obvious and mostly external biological reasons that zombies wouldn't exist.

First off, what makes us the top of the food chain is that combined with our ability to think sideways, adapt the world to us, and our instinct of self-preservation that doesn't force us into mindlessness, we are the preeminent killers on this planet. We may not have the natural tools, but we've designed a whole slew of artificial ones that kill faster, effectively and more efficiently than any other species in this world. Not to mention that our cities are designed to make it difficult for our enemies (namely other living, thinking, planning humans) to navigate, making them excellently defensive fortresses.

Now, take zombies, which is a human with no sense of self-preservation, no thought beyond 'eat brains' and definitely no tactical thinking capacity. For heaven's sake, they can't even figure out a bloody DOOR KNOB!

Which makes me wonder how stupid the entire race of humans has to be if they can't clean up that mess in less than a week.

Shows like the Walking Dead would be better served by making the 'monsters' a little less common but a bit more dangerous. Instead whenever I see people dying to zombies, I nod to myself, thinking 'Yep, that's about right, if you aren't smart enough to know how to deal with a mindless creature.'